Utah Jazz: Disrupting some much-needed progress
It had been something of a roller coaster season for the Utah Jazz. Quite a few people saw them as a trendy, dark horse pick to make the Finals, but the Mike Conley gambit was backfiring in a major way, the defense was surprisingly lackluster and the Jazz were seen as a fairly big disappointment.
Then, as they’ve done in the past few seasons, Utah came to life on the season’s back nine, winning nine of 14 games leading into the NBA’s hiatus to jump all the way back up to fourth in the conference standings. Conley was looking more like himself, Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert were first-time All-Stars and some much-needed progress was finally evident.
Unfortunately, chemistry issues had been a problem all season long, and they just got a bit worse. No one will forget how Conley struggled to adapt, or how it was reported he’d be coming off the bench only for Joe Ingles to be moved to the second unit instead, but things really hit the fan when Gobert’s carelessness in the locker room led to his identity as the NBA’s unofficial patient zero for COVID-19. That ugly news amplified when Mitchell, his All-Star teammate, tested positive too.
We’ll never know who contracted it first or how it was spread in that locker room, but suffice it to say that Gobert’s immaturity and inability to grasp the severity of the coronavirus had Mitchell pretty steamed. If they’re not using these next few months to bury the hatchet and make amends, it could easily derail a season that was already flirting with flying off the rails anyway.